Article October 9, 1920 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Frederick L. Hoffman, C. W. Hale

The Christian Science Monitor

["The Christ"—The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, U.S.A., Jan. 3, 1920]

Every reader of the Bible remembers the famous occasion, at Cæsarea Philippi, when Christ Jesus put to the disciples the question, staggering in its implication, "Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?" and every one remembers equally well the indeterminate nature of the reply, "Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets." The answer, in any case, made it perfectly clear that the "common people" had failed utterly to grasp the teaching of the Christ, and were accounting for the mighty works of the carpenter of Nazareth on a purely superstitious or necromantic basis, in accordance with much of the popular thought of the day. Then it was that Jesus turned suddenly to the disciples themselves, with the same question, "But whom say ye that I am?" a demand which brought from Peter the instantaneous answer, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."

The Christ, then, it is quite certain, is the Son of God, is the infinite idea of divine Mind, and thus is the reality of everything which seems to exist in a material form, from a blade of grass to a star. It is generic man, for as Mrs. Eddy has written, on page 475 of Science and Health, "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious identity of being as found in Science, in which man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker." Thus it is that the woman in Revelation, equally with Christ Jesus, symbolizes the divine idea, as Mrs. Eddy, in turn, explains, on page 561 of Science and Health, "The woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man, the spiritual idea of God; she illustrates the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea."

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